Empire State Building
by themessofadreamer
Summary: "And what happened?" He asked. I smiled, bitterly. "I fell off the Empire State Building and she became New York City."


**HELLO GUYS! **

**I'm on Spring Break, so I decided to write a little something for you. I think it's a little confusing, but I don't know, I hope you like it. Let me know with a review and I hope you're all doing alright. I'm almost done with school, so hopefully I will be back with another story soon. **

**Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I own the plot. Yep.**

* * *

**Empire State Building**

"Russo!" I looked up from the register, Nate Gray pushing both entrance doors of the substation, looking at me with a smirk. Classic.

"Gray." I replied, sounding uninterested, going back to what I was doing before.

"Mitchie Torres gig, same place as always, 8 o'clock." He said, holding up two homemade tickets as he walked towards me. "What do you say?"

I sighed. "I think I'll pass."

"What?!" Nate exclaimed, surprised. "Dude, you have never missed a Mitchie show!"

"Exactly, so that's why she's not even going to notice if I'm not there." I replied, counting how many one dollar bills where inside the register. "Add to that, Shane will be there. That's all she needs."

Nate took the sit in front of the register, raising an eyebrow as he looked at me count the bills. "The fact that you have attended every single one of her shows and you're not going to attend this one is going to make her notice, idiot." I shrugged. "And why do you even care if my brother is there or not? It's not like they still were together or anything!"

"I don't mind, she's just not going to notice anyone else if he's there and I really am not up to feeling rejection, even if she doesn't even notice she's rejecting everyone around her." I wrote down the amount of one dollar bills there were in a little notebook next to me and started counting the 20 dollar bills. "Besides, you know what Harper thinks of my friendship with her."

"And your point is?"

"I have to keep my best friend happy."

"By disappointing a young aspiring singer songwriter that counts on her most loyal supporter?!" I rolled my eyes.

"She has enough with you, trust me." Nate shook his head, putting his hand over mine so I stopped counting bills and looked at him.

"I'm not her most loyal supporter but you are."

I sighed, again. "She has disappointed me so many times that I think it's only fair I disappoint her just one time."

Nate nodded, pointing at me with the index finger of his other hand. "There it is what I was looking for, the real reason, right in your eyes." I bit my lip. This guy knew me way too well. "You're upset with her."

"No, I'm not." I rubbed my cheek. "I'm upset with myself."

"And why would that be?" He pulled his hand from mine, letting me continue with the bills.

I stayed in silence for a while, having his patient and comforting brown eyes on me the entire time. Then, once I finished, I closed the register and looked at him, letting myself be as vulnerable as I wasn't going to be with anyone else. "Do you remember Miley, your first girlfriend?"

He scoffed. "How would I even forget her? I see her every day."

"Well, when you were dating, you used to say that she was better than London, better than the New York Giants, better than playing guitar on a Sunday morning." He smiled, nodding. "And I remember thinking, 'man, this guy is nuts' because I couldn't understand how could a girl be better than everything you had loved your entire life."

"And what happened?"

I smiled, bitterly. "I fell off the Empire State Building and she became New York City."

Nate looked at me for a moment as if I was going insane. I mean, what would anyone think of someone said that to them? But not long after, he understood. He knew what I was trying to say with it. And I thanked god he did.

"Did it hurt?"

"Like fucking hell."

He sighed, looking down at the tickets in his hands. "Does it still hurt?"

I shrugged. "It's just one of those wounds that start bleeding if you touch them, but are fine if you leave them alone."

"And I'm touching it by asking you to come to me, right?"

I nodded. "Pretty much, yeah."

In the last couple of months, I have come to the conclusion that love is like jumping off a building. You do it in a moment of courage and don't realize what you're doing until you're finally falling. You can't change your mind once you jumped and there's no parachute that will be able to save you. However, when you're in the air, all worries seem to disappear, making you feel free in the best way possible. Nevertheless, when you're close to hitting the ground, you realize it was a bad idea. There was no reason to jump, there is not going to be anyone to catch you. Why did you jump in the first place, you ask? Only God knows and you're falling. There's no stopping you more than the cold hard ground and you know then it's going to hurt like damn hell. And you wish you didn't jump. Then, you hit the ground and depending on how high was the building you jumped from will be the damage, but no matter how it is, you're going to bleed anyway.

So, to some extend I'm saying love is suicide. A little harsh, I know, but from the way I see it, it is. We are a person before we fall in love and we are another once it all ends. So in some way, we kill ourselves and it's suicide of the mind too, because once love bites you, you become careless and really fucking stupid. Believe me, this is coming from someone who is idiotically still under the spell of love.

I was careless and stupid a few months ago; right now I'm just stupid. Why? I'm still there.

You see, I fell for a girl that I knew from the start never was going to look at me that way. I knew it was a bad idea all along and however it still felt like I was jumping from the damn Empire State Building. The way down to the ground was long, but I enjoyed it. I mean, I'm not going to deny the reality; this girl I fell for is gorgeous. She's the kind of girl that can take your and many others breaths away and still not believe she's stunning. Her eyes hold some kind of mystery that probably not even she has discovered herself yet they still have a way to be as honest as they'll ever be. Her hair, brown, wavy and long tend to distract me in ways nothing else can and don't even get me started with her smile, because as far as I'm concerned, it could light up a thousand skies. But her physical features are not the reason I jumped off the Empire State Building for her. No, if it anything, it was that big heart of hers that made me fall with no return in mind. She has a kind soul, a warm hand for anyone in need. She might never be perfect, but she was everything I ever needed.

And that's how you notice I'm still stupid. I crashed really hard against the ground a long time ago and it keeps bleeding uncontrollably but all about her keeps pulling me to her when I am fully aware of how much I should walk away. She's the girl of my dreams, yet the girl of my nightmares. I can see the sun in her eyes, but it might because they're burning me inside. I'm not careless anymore, because I can notice these things again, but I'm stupid because I am not walking away.

I'm standing right next to her, when she's a thousand miles away from me. I'm a fool and I'm stupid and everyone knows it.

Even her.

"Why now, though?" Nate asked after a while, once I finished attending the few people that came to buy their sandwiches. "You have had this going on for a long time. Like, even after she found out, you still dealt with it. Why the change?"

I pushed the inside of my cheek with my tongue. "Because the faster you fall, the faster you crash and supposedly, once you crash, it's over." I licked the back of my teeth. "So, I let myself free fall because I wanted to crash and get it over with but it results I survived the fall and here I am, still bleeding. So, I'm trying to get stitches here and let it heal by itself."

He gave me a confused look. "Sometimes I get lost when you talk in metaphor this much, you know."

I chuckled. "I just want to move on, Nate, that's the main thing."

"So are you going to avoid her now or what?"

"Well, I can't do that, it'd be shitty of me and I'm not that kind of person. I'm just trying to stop thinking about her like she puts the stars in the sky and a way to do it is by stopping looking at the things I like about her."

"You love hearing her sing, so makes sense." He left out a long sigh, putting the tickets inside of the pocket of his football jacket. "It's going to take you a long time by doing that, you know?"

"Yeah, but what can I say? I got myself into this slowly; I will get myself out of it the same way. Damn me for being a small town girl with big city dreams."

"Dude, seriously. Nobody talks with that many metaphors so stop!" I smacked Nate's arm slightly, smiling a little.

"Let me be, asshole."

However way it was, there was one thing I was learning about love. We, people, tend to be stupid. We don't care how many times we say 'it's not going to happen again', we go for it once we see it close to us. We jump, in a moment of courage. And I knew that, even when I was sitting on the ground letting myself bleed, the Empire State Building was never going to be the tallest building in the world and that I probably would jump again, in the future, of a taller building. And maybe that time, I would get lucky and not hit the ground. Maybe someone will catch me and I won't have to talk myself out of anything.

Maybe everything will be okay.

"So no concert?" Nate asked one last time, with hopeful eyes, only because he hated going to places alone. Social anxiety, he said one time.

"I don't think–" The doors of the substation opened once again, making me look away from Nate and making him turn around, cutting off what I was saying as soon as Mitchie Torres herself walked in, wearing a red leather jacket and skinny black jeans, along with her beloved black chucks and that face eating smile of hers that I liked so much.

"Hi Guys!" She exclaimed, sounding excited as she approached us. Nate waved; I raised both of my eyebrows, placing both of my hands on the counter.

"Excited?" Nate asked, smiling at her and she nodded enthusiastically, standing next to him.

"Completely! It's going to be my best show ever. You both will be there, right?" She asked, looking directly at me when she asked that. Nate looked back to me, smirk on his face. Classic, I tell you.

"I don't know, Mitch, I have to work tomorrow…"

"Come on, Lexie, I can't do it if you're not there! You know your opinion means a lot to me!"

Maybe one day, I said, right? "I guess I could try…"

She smiled a little bigger, leaning in and giving me a kiss on the cheek because she knew and I hated her for using that against me. And I hated Nate, because he handed me my ticket right after, in front of her, so I wouldn't get cold feet. And I hated myself, because as for now, it seems like I'm still in New York.

"Thank you, Lex!"

"Anything for you, Mitch."


End file.
